Thursday 11 March 2010 19.05 EST
First published on Thursday 11 March 2010 19.05 EST

The middle classes' favourite shop, John Lewis, had a good day yesterday. Sales up. Market share up. Profits up. And a £151m bonus shared between 70,000 members of staff, or partners as they are known. Not bad during a recession. But a decent business performance is not the main reason that this retail group gets its own series on the BBC or a consistently good press (try to imagine the 10 o'clock news indulgently showing happy investment bankers jumping with joy over their bonuses; yet that is practically an annual event with John Lewis). Nor is it the company's high-quality Waitrose food or extensive range of linen; no, it is its organisational makeup.

As a company owned by its workers, John Lewis has always been a curiosity in big business. Yet after a historic crisis in the business world, there is a distinct appetite for greater diversity in the ways companies are set up. Treasury ministers and officials have discussed fostering the creation of more building societies as a counterweight to a banking sector increasingly dominated by a handful of huge names. Vince Cable is now calling for Northern Rock to be turned into a mutual rather than flogged to investors. These interesting ideas reflect a realisation by politicians and civil servants that employee-owned firms are not the Soviet kolkhozes of lazy stereotype, but are valid forms of commercial enterprise. The problem comes when politicians talk about applying the John Lewis model to NHS hospitals or inner-city schools.

One can see the politicians' train of thought: John Lewis is popular; therefore this policy will be popular. But even if we overlook the vague announcements (teachers having more say over their workplaces, which is what is sometimes talked about, is a great idea, but it is not mutualism), there are big problems with the very idea of a John Lewis state. Even nice bourgeois retail chains are in the business of making a profit; the NHS is not. Public sector organisations should be accountable to the taxpayer; an architects' firm need not be. Turning public services into co-operatives opens them up to the risk of being run by profit-seeking companies. Having more mutuals in the private sector would be a fine thing, but before politicians import the John Lewis principle into the public sector they should probably shop around a bit more.